Interns at Dinner - Rainbow Seafood on Lamma Island

Yesterday, the ODM Asia team left early from work to have a farewell-cum-welcome dinner. We took a complementary boat ride, offered by the restaurant we made our reservation at - Rainbow Seafood Restaurant,  from Central Pier no. 9 to Lamma Island.

After a bumpy 20-30mins boat ride, we were settled down and had our food served to us. We had seaweed soup, lobster noodles, prawns, abalone, sweet and sour pork, fish, pepper crab, fried rice and steamed vegetables (and beer).

Though it was such a scrumptious meal, we could not finish every dish because the portions were just too big! It was also some of our French staff maiden adventure in trying Chinese styled seafood and they gave the thumbs up for it. I really loved the 2nd dish because the fusion of cheese and lobster was so good; the cheese literally melted in mouth.

All in all, this dinner was definitely a good closure for those whose internship journey is drawing to an end while a fantastic start to 3 of our new Singapore interns who will be starting next week. Thus, I would like to wish all our interns 'bonne chance & Bon Voyage'!

Noodle Eating Contest - Dragon Centre in Sham Shui Po

On Sunday, at the Dragon Centre in Sham Shui Po, I had the privilege of being a VIP guest at a huge event that was being held. They were some interesting mini events and shows held in the centre such as Model Catwalks, Singing and something extremely interesting: A noodle eating competition!


As in most eating competitions the amount of food that had to be eaten was unreal, more than I could eat in a day. It took four people to eat one bowl of noodles. The competition consisted of multiple four-person teams that all tried to finish the noodles as fast as they could. The bowls had to be completely empty before you could say you were finished. The competitors looked like they were going to be sick. In fact the winner was trying to stop himself from gagging after he'd swallowed his last bite, as you can see in this video:

This was a truly great sight, to see fully grown adults try to over stuff themselves with noodles. It was very fun to watch and by far the craziest thing I've seen in a while.

All for a good cause @TEDxWanchai

This week 4 interns including myself volunteered to help out at TEDxWanchai, held at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. This organisation includes some inspirational speakers that have 'Ideas worth Spreading'. They are given 18mins to talk of their influential lives. TED serves a great purpose in raising awareness for charitable associations and campaign’s on world problems.

When we arrived, we received TEDx t-shirts to make us part of the crew. The day started off by greeting, ushering and serving coffee. For me this was a new experience, but it was lovely to see such a large variety of guests, young and old.

During the day I managed to catch two of the speakers during their talk. One of which was Rob Lilwall who wowed us with a story about his adventure cycling from Siberia all the way to back home to London. Despite the struggle of cycling 30,000 miles he amused us by sharing funny remarks about the trip. The money raised all went to a charity called Viva, giving greater opportunities to less fortunate children in China.

The next speaker, Robin Hwang from the Foodlink enlightened us with her family's aim to fight hunger and poverty in HK by reducing food wastage. Their organisation collects surplus food from hotels and delivers it to shelters for the needy.

As the talks came to an end the next stage was to serve food. The hall eventually became packed with guests and buzzing with conversations.



Crew members hard at work

After a long day, the occasion finally drew to a close around 9.30pm. The ODM team were tired from all the hard work, but through this experience we were able to meet new people and learn new things. Personally, I would consider taking part in something like this again as I found it rewarding.

Alyssa, Jaime and I taking a well earned rest.

 Some of us went to the after party at the Kee Club in Lan Kwai Fong. This was a lavish private members club where they were serving free drinks. It was an offer I could not miss!

Weird... but funny people in Hong Kong!

I have visited the Animation, Comics & Games Expo 2012 in Hong Kong. It was a very crowded tradeshow, full of eccentric people (also know as "CosPlayers") as you can see below...

I met this "Japanese/Chinese style" girl in couple with a "Chinese/French Soldier" promoting a World War 2 comic book.

 

I asked these 3 girls to take a photo with me (yes... all three are girls!) but they preferred posing like that! They were all very funny!

On this one, I posed with 3 girls wearing cat masks. Not as crazy as the next picture I took.

Imp ears, costume, hat... This girl was fully equipped and was certainly the craziest girl in this tradeshow!

 

You can check these few pictures below to catch a glimpse of the different "CosPlayers" I met there (my favourite is the red/race flag one, I don't know why..).

Overall, it was a very cool event and if you really want to have fun, it is a very good place to spend an afternoon (entrance fee is 30 HKD only). If you want to have a better view of the different stands, you can also watch this Video Blog (ACGHK 2012 Overview).

Exploring Yangshuo, Guilin

Last weekend all the Zhuhai interns had a perfect chance to discover Yangshuo, a county in Guilin, a place of unique scenery, cultural heritage and, as it turned out, great night life.

After quite an entertaining 8 hour's bus ride (thanks to our Chinese travel companions who were singing, dancing and joking about the crocodiles in the river we were going to swim in) we finally reached our destination. It was about 6:30 in the morning, but Yangshuo was already hustling and bustling, with people selling and buying all possible kinds of things. 

After having a nice breakfast, we were ready to explore local surroundings. Fighting the temptation to take a picture on every corner, we walked down to the Li River, and, following the directions of our super-energetic group leader, we embarked on a bamboo raft. 

Going down the river, we could see lots of beautifully-shaped mountains, including the famous 20-yuan mountains:

and the girls blessed their washing machines when they spotted a traditional way of washing clothes:

Then we took a bus to visit the Yinzi Cave with its impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations.

When all the hungry, waiting at the exit of the cave, finally met all the curious, who took their time to wander around, it was just the right time to try the local food near the moon mountain.

After such a nice refuelling, our guys were ready for a little bit more than watching the butterflies in the Butterfly cave and they decided to speed up the exploration by hopping on scooters. 

While the rest of us continued to enjoy the nature's beauty among stalactites in various butterfly forms.

With loads of photos and impressions, we set off to our hotel. After spending a whole day broadening our horizons, what we deserved was a famous Beerfish dinner, which we were happy to taste.

Finally, the last thing we had to explore was the Xi Jie (Bar Street). And the exploration was successful!

However, the next morning, after such a challenging exploration, few of us had enough courage to ride bicycles in the blazing sun. Actually the only ones who took the bicycles were our Chinese friends, while we had a nice bus ride which took us to the Yulong River, where we again embarked on bamboo rafts. But this time it wasn't a relaxing trip: armed with water guns, we mercilessly attacked each other. Don't worry: no soldiers were hurt!

Tired and wet, but still happy, we went for a lunch and popped in a shop to get ready before a ride back home.

All in all, a great trip with a great bunch of people!

Nice to meet you VICENTE: Typhoon level 10 in Hong Kong

Vicente from the sky

What a beautiful view of Vicente from the plane. However, the happenings under that wonderful storm eye were unpleasant. Back in 2008, I have also experienced a typhoon during my first internship in Hong Kong, but the recent one was crazy!

Vicente hits Hong Kong between the 23rd to 24th July, on 1am, at its full force (level 10). Since 1946, only 13 typhoons reached this level and the last one was in 1999. That's why the streets were totally empty Hong Kong yesterday. Everyone is advised to stay indoors.

Picture taken in Central, usually one of the busiest place in Hong Kong 

Perhaps the worst damage we have seen is the scaffolding which collapsed on a residential building. Now you should understand the danger of staying outside during a tropical storm. I could never imagine the consequences if one of this bamboo crash on someone…

Collapsed scaffolding

After the tons of damages caused by Vicente, it is finally safe on 24th July morning as the Hong Kong observatory lifted the warning… Indeed a shocking experience but I am glad all is well now.

Hong Kong Bay after the Storm 

Summer Barcamp Hong Kong @Cocoon

There was no time to chill despite the weekend! This Saturday, 14th of July, was a special and interesting day. Thibaut and I attended the Summer Barcamp in Cocoon.

What is Barcamp? BarCamp was born in Palo Alto, California in 2005. In just three years, it became an international network of user-generated conferences–open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by the attendees–often focusing on early-stage web applications and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

According to Barcamp's website, "It is the Biggest Unconference in Hong Kong"

Our "mission" is none other than to search for some web designers, as well as promoting ODM!

Indeed, Barcamp is a unique conference from 11am to 6pm. The conference was held using various topics animated by volunteers, each lasted approximately 30 minutes. I personally like the topic “When it becomes hard to manage” and paid full attention to it. 

Conference at Barcamp Hong Kong

Next to the conferences, people were discussing about various topics whereas Thibaut and I were eagerly looking for designers. We tried all possible ways to succeed.

Our advertisement is located at the upper right corner

At the end of the day, all participants are supposed to have a drink together. However, Thibaut and I did not stay for it. Instead, we cabbed down to LKF to celebrate our National Day with other French buddies :)

Thibaut and I in the Taxi: Let’s go to celebrate the French National Day